TEN
He didn’t look up. Neither did she.
They didn’t have to.
Six years apart hadn’t killed their awareness of each other. That shower proved it.
Rivers drifted closer to the table, close enough to catch the pulse jumping in her throat.
Still, she didn’t look at him. She circled the far end instead, keeping the table between them.
He moved with her.
Slowly. Neither of them speaking. Neither quite walking away.
Her fingertips trailed along the table’s edge. Then she turned for the door.
Rivers was moving before he made the decision.
His boots struck the concrete as he went after her. She quickened her steps but didn’t look back.
In a few strides he’d caught her wrist and pulled her to a stop. “Ryss.”
She fixed her stare on his shoulder, his chin, his chest. Anywhere but him. “I have work.”
Yet she didn’t move.
“Give me two minutes of your time. All I’m asking for is two minutes.”
Two minutes. His mind was already working out how to make every second count.
His thumb found the inside of her wrist, and he felt her pulse leaping under it. He traced a slow circle there, and she looked down at his hand on her. But she didn’t pull away.
He turned her hand palm up and found the thin white line across the base of her thumb that he’d know blind. The scar from a can opener that slipped years ago, back in the first months they were together, back when she still lived on canned soup and hadn’t yet let him teach her how to actually cook.
He ran his fingertip along the mark in a slow swipe, the years between them compressed into one small ridge of scar tissue.
“You still have this,” he said, voice quiet.
“You still remember it.” It wasn’t a question but was still echoed with surprise.
“I remember everything.” His voice was a rough rasp. “Every scar. Every mark. I memorized everything about you, Ryss.”
Her expression shifted. It wasn’t quite a softening, but damn close to it. Close enough that his chest squeezed with hope he had no right to feel and all the desire to grasp hold of.
She reached for his hand in return. His breath hitched as she turned it over the same way he’d turned hers. She traced a line of callus along his palm, and he tried to remember if he had this much wear and tear on his hands back then—back when they were together.
She ran her fingertips upward and found a scar along the side of his forearm—pale, puckered, old but clearly unfamiliar to her.
She paused with her finger over it, emotions warring in her face. He watched questions float to the surface and get swallowed back down, and he realized, with a fresh ache, how much he wanted her to ask.
He didn’t remember closing the distance between them. One second there was air between their bodies, and the next she was crushed against him, one hand anchored on her hip and the other sliding into her hair.
She fisted the front of his shirt and went on tiptoe, surging upward for his kiss at the same time he bowed to meet her lips.
Then they were kissing, slower than in the shower. Less like a dam breaking and more like two people who finally realized they didn’t have to drown.
She murmured a sound against his lips that went through his entire body at once.
He didn’t think, just moved. He tightened one arm around her waist and hooked the other behind her knees, lifting her off the ground in one smooth glide. She gasped, hands flying to his shoulders, and her short laugh burst against his throat.
“Reid—”
“I’ve got you.” He was already moving down the hall toward his room, and thank god she didn’t fight him, because he didn’t know if he’d survive if she did.
He got the door open one-handed and kicked it shut behind them. He set her down and walked her against the wall, pressing her back to the cool concrete. His body crowded in after her as if it couldn’t last another second without her.
Her hazel eyes were a mix of emotions—sparks of want woven with glimmers of sadness. Searching his eyes for a long minute, she reached up and ran her fingers over his stubbled jaw.
He swallowed hard against the tightness in his throat. “Tell me to stop,” he grated out, “and I will.”
“Don’t.” She was already working the hem of his shirt, dragging it up and off. “Don’t stop, Reid.”
He grasped her wrists and whipped them over her head, pinning them to the wall at the same time he claimed her mouth. His cock shot to full mast in one hard surge of need as she parted her sweet lips for him.
He swept his tongue inside, tasting, seeking, questing, commanding. She returned his kiss stroke for stroke. When she began uttering those little noises that always used to drive him crazy, he picked her up and turned for the bed.
In two steps, his knees met it and he lay her down. Before she could pull him down too, he tore off her shirt, flicking open buttons the way he ran drills and strumming his fingers over her pebbled skin.
As he dipped his mouth to hers, she locked her thighs around his hips and rocked. With a growl, he ground his stiff cock into the V of her legs, already burning for her clenching heat.
Their kiss spiraled on and on as they each relearned the feel of the other and tested new limits.
But some things hadn’t changed. The way she softened when he pulled her closer.
Her soft sigh when he kissed the corner of her mouth.
His name whispered against his lips, so different from anyone else saying it.
Six years disappeared in pieces.
For a few stolen minutes, there was no anger between them. No impossible future waiting outside this room. Just Caryssa in his arms, exactly where some part of him had always expected her to be.
He ripped his mouth free and stared into her eyes for two full heartbeats before he worked a path of kisses down her throat to her breasts. In a series of wiggles, she helped him divest her of her clothes, and he shucked off the rest of his too.
When he covered her body with his—skin to skin—they shared a gasp.
He claimed her mouth again at the same moment she hooked her ankles behind his back and pulled him right in.
In one hard glide, he sank balls-deep. The dark heat blooming at the base of his spine pulsed as a warning that if he didn’t slow things down, he was going to reach the peak too soon.
And if this was the last time he had the woman he loved—would always fucking love—it would be as damn close to perfect as he could make it.
Braced over her, he panted for control, forcing himself to still inside her.
She was having none of it. She rolled her hips upward, grinding her innermost point against the throbbing head of his cock.
With a groan, he buried his face against her neck, eyes pinched shut. “Baby. I want you so damn bad I can’t even breathe.”
“I want you too.” The tremor in her voice made his head snap up to meet her gaze.
Her eyes swam with so many things he didn’t know how to name. But the tension in his body eased enough to move, and he slowly churned his hips, gliding through her clenching walls.
“Reid!”
He ducked his head and took her mouth again as their bodies moved together with minds of their own.
Years apart had changed them. Hardened them in different ways. Built entire lives between the people they’d been and the people they were now.
But this hadn’t changed.
She still knew him. He still knew her. Every instinct that had once pulled them together was still there, refusing to accept what their minds already knew.
There was no easy way back to each other. Maybe there was no way back at all.
But neither of them could let go.
Not here. Not now.
For these few stolen minutes, they could stop fighting the one truth that had survived everything else.
They still belonged to each other.
He thrust inside her again, watching the pleasure ripple across her beautiful face. He took her hard and fast. Slow and steady. Barely moving, with their lips fused in an endless kiss.
Suddenly, she planted her hands on his shoulders and applied pressure. Knowing what she wanted as instinctively as drawing breath, he rolled with her.
She landed on top of him, her hair tumbling around her shoulders and her cheeks flushed with desire. His cock was rooted deep in her pussy, and she took what she wanted.
And he saw it in her eyes. She needed this control. Needed to know that this time, he wouldn’t be the one making the choices for both of them.
He’d hurt her enough. If she gave him another chance, he’d do everything in his power to make sure he never did it again.
She pushed down on his length, milking him with every inch of her. Her nails curled into his chest, and he enjoyed the stinging bite, wishing he could take her pain and draw it into himself and carry it for her so she could be free.
She shivered as she rose on him again, withdrawing and slamming down over and over. Her head dropped back, and he couldn’t see her eyes but her pulse drumming in her throat told him she was close.
She was dripping wet, soaking his cock, and he was so fucking close he wasn’t sure he could last.
Cupping her breasts, he swished his thumbs over her tight nipples with the pressure to send her over the edge. With a cry, she snapped her head forward, lips parted on a gasp as he toyed with her nipples and she rode him toward the finish.
“Reid.” Her voice came out small. Then grew louder. “Reid!”
“Come for me, baby. That’s right. I’ve got you,” he told her for the second time, meaning it more than ever.
With a hard jerk, she came apart and destroyed him in the process. His body responded to her and followed her into madness. The first spurt of cum showered her walls as she shook around him, pulsing and milking every last drop.
A final cry escaped her and she collapsed on top of him, boneless and languid.
Perfect.
Right where she belongs.
* * * * *
Caryssa had let Reid back into her bed. That didn’t mean she’d let him back into her heart.
She was tangled in his sheets, in his arms. Her blood was slowing in her veins and her eyelids were heavy.
None of that meant she’d let down her guard.